Book Review

  • The Return, Buzz Aldrin & John Barnes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 2000, 352 pages, C$32.00 hc, ISBN 0-312-87424-3

    Note from your reviewer: In these chronicles, I usually try to review every single new SF book I read. Alas, The Return is the type of satisfying thriller that doesn’t really warrant much extended critical thought. So, to get me out of my writing block loop, allow me to meta-review the five reviews currently up on Amazon.com.

    Amazon.com: Old-school moonwalker Buzz Aldrin teams up again with former Hugo and Nebula Awards nominee John Barnes (…)

    Barnes hasn’t, unfortunately, fulfilled much of the promise he had shown earlier with such books as the massive Mother of Storms, the excellent A MIllion Open Doors, the juvenile Orbital Resonance or even his two first undistinguished novels that seemed to prefigure a strong socio-SF writer. His last few books have been a depressing sequel, a men’s adventure trilogy, an anthology and two unconvincing novels (Finity and Candle, both severely evaluated by critics.)

    (…) the duo’s previous effort, 1996’s Encounter with Tiber (…)

    To be fair, The Return is a lot more fun that Encounter with Tiber. Shorter, snappier, more interesting.

    Part thriller, part infomercial for the Aldrin space manifesto,

    …which only matters if you known about Aldrin’s commercial interests.

    The New York Times Book Review, Gerald Jonas: The Return offers dovetailing accounts of a space emergency and rescue by three narrators … who sound like the same person.

    Ouch! True, though.

    f. from Massachusetts, USA: I enjoyed the beginning of this book. It started with a bang, and then just sort of fizzled out for me. The background, the launch and the “accident” I found interesting. It was the tedium of the aftermath that I found dull. The lawsuits, the guilt, the lawyers, that followed…yawn.

    Oooohhh, there we disagree. The first chapters is nearly perfunctory; it brings the characters to the interesting situation. And this interesting situation is how, realistically, a private business would have to deal with disaster in space. That means media, lawsuits and lawyers. For all its faults, The Return has an air of realism that’s very well done.

    (On the other hand, the book gets more an more far-fetched as it goes along and ventures from SF to techno-thriller.)

    D.W from Rochester, New York: The first chapter of this book is AWFUL: a press conference with a smug first-person narrator just cramming back story down our throats.

    Well… as I was saying…

    After that, though, it really does get moving nicely, and by the end you do share Aldrin’s enthusiasm for getting us back into space.

    Absolutely. There is no question that The Return is pro-space propaganda, and it does work quite well. There is a point in the novel where they essentially take away space’s practical benefit to modern society, and the desperation of everyone is real.

    (…) and perhaps the most beautiful book I’ve seen in a while, with a translucent dust-jacket overtop of a glossy hard cover.

    Eeek! No way! The dust jacket is translucent plastic, true, but the design is atrocious and, believe it or not, all the price, blurb, UPC information plus the author and title is only on the dust jacket. There is nothing on the glossy-bound book itself but an illustration! That, to me, is an unacceptable betrayal of the role of a dust jacket—to separate marketing from book, leaving title and author for “serious” library-builders. I can’t imagine the pain of shelving dust-jacket-free copies of this book. I really hope this doesn’t become a trend.

    E.L. from West Palm Beach, FL: THE RETURN covers techno thriller territory familiar for readers of ENCOUNTER WITH TIBER.

    Well, apart from the interstellar flights and the aliens…

    D.S from Los Angeles California: The story tends to wander between courtroom intrigue, nostalgic family drama and techno thriller. (…) It is a fast and easy read at times exciting with the technical side explained in simple terms. A pleasant way to spend some summer reading time.

    There really isn’t much more to say after that.

    So what have we learned from this meta-reviewing exercise?

    1. Amazon.com readers know what they’re talking about. Usually.
    2. You can totally distort someone’s opinion with careful editing.
    3. Modern SF reviewers can steal stuff like never before
    4. The Return: Worth a look, but nothing overly impressive.

  • A Fall of Moondust, Arthur C. Clarke

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Signet, 1961, 215 pages, C$1.50 mmpb, ISBN Unavailable

    The nice thing about having read a lot as a teenager is that I may keep fond memories of a particular book while forgetting all the details. In the case of A Fall of Moondust (the only Arthur C. Clarke novel in my high school’s library. No, it wasn’t a particularly good library.), I could only remember a fairly good book that ended in mid-story. So, almost ten years later, I couldn’t pass up the chance to pick a good Signet paperback edition of the novel.

    I half-expected to be disappointed. A decade -and probably a thousand SF books- older and more jaded, would it be possible for me to have as much fun as the first time around? Clarke is known for books that appeal enormously to teens, but would I be able to enjoy his particularly mechanistic approach to characterization another time?

    Well, either I haven’t matured all that much, or Clarke has truly written a really good book. I ended up compulsively reading A Fall of Moondust with, I think, even more enjoyment now than ten years ago.

    Written at a time where humans had barely entered the space age, and fully eight years before we went to the Moon, A Fall of Moondust posits the existence of a vast lunar “sea” of very fine dust with liquid-like properties. Humans being notoriously unable to avoid opportunities of the sort, one tourist business starts offering guided tours of the sea using a specialized dust-surfing craft. Obviously, something must go wrong, and that’s why the Selene crashes and sinks under the dust sea with a full load of passengers on board. Search-and-Rescue efforts are mounted, as every passenger has a secret or two to hide.

    Simple plot, but as always with Clarke, it’s the simplicity, the technical details, the oddball throwaway lines and the understated good humor of the book that make it all worthwhile. A Fall of Moondust isn’t fancy, but you don’t need to be complex in order to build a novel of humans against desperate odds. The crystal-clear writing style is a joy to read. No useless character traits murky up the narrative. As the average length of the SF novel has risen to a point where shorter novels are a tough sell (see my review of Robert Charles Wilson’s Bios), A Fall of Moondust is just the right length for a good read.

    Which brings us to my second surprise: After realizing that the book was as good as I remembered, I found out that there was even more goodness that I remembered! Turns out that my high school’s French paperback edition ended right after the ship is located, but before the rescue efforts got underway. French cheapness or incompetent editing? You decide.

    But the net effect was akin to a friend of mine’s fantasy that good books should self-expand to include even more goodness. Suddenly, there was even more fun and entertainment from Clarke! A thrilling rescue sequence! And a complete ending! Can you ask anything more of an updated teenhood memory?

    More maturely, it’s interesting to note how gracefully A Fall of Moondust has aged. The technical details are surprisingly good (once you assume the ocean-of-moondust bit) and the pacing is as snappy as ever. Clarke even throws in ultra-modern disparaging references to the nature of visual media news. Yes, the characters and the plotting are a bit plodding, but don’t interpret that as “substandard”; the relevant members of the Selene catastrophe are adequately presented and somewhat sympathetic despite their rough edges. Funny how hard-SF’s weaknesses can become advantages; you can read SF from the seventies and even if it’s twenty years closer, the no-less-caricatural “new wave” approach to characterization seems more ridiculous than Clarke’s no-nonsense approach.

    The result, at least, is clear: A Fall of Moondust is well-worth a re-visit for those who read it at least a decade ago, and pretty much a must-read for the others. Classic Hard-SF doesn’t really get any better than this.

  • The Trigger, Arthur C. Clarke & Michael Kube-McDowell

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1999, 447 pages, C$35.95 hc, ISBN 0-553-10458-6

    According to some SF commentators, your reviewer included, science-fiction is about the effects of change on human behavior. That change is usually linked to scientific and technological innovation is unavoidable, but not essential. This definition of SF isn’t perfect (nor accepted by all), but it allows to define an idea-space in which SF can distinguish itself from all other types of fiction.

    At the same time, it allows “pure-SF” fans to distance themselves from the unimaginative drivel that passes itself as SF in the media and in the general population’s worst stereotypes about the genre. In media terms, STAR WARS isn’t SF (it’s fantasy in futuristic trappings) and most of STAR TREK isn’t SF (it’s adventure/soap opera in space) while GATTACA is SF (studying biotechnology-induced changes in humanity) and DARK CITY is SF (musing on artificial manipulation of memory on a society). Science-Fiction should be conceptually solid, imaginative, preferably controversial.

    Needless to say, unimaginative adventures-with-laser-guns are far more common than “true SF”, nowadays as yesterday. But fans of the pure stuff can now run to their bookstores, because a new must-read is in town.

    The Trigger is a “What if?” novel of the first order: What if someone came up with a foolproof way to remotely detonate all nitrate-based explosives? Practically speaking, this would blow up -at a distance- most munitions and explosives in common usage. The perfect gun control tool.

    Had The Trigger been written in any other civilized country in the world, the results would have been interesting, but not much more. Of course, this being published in the United States (let’s not fool ourselves in thinking that English-born Sri Lanka resident Arthur C. Clarke has anything more to do with the book than collaborating to the outline), The Trigger has to face America’s centuries-old fascination with guns, conspiracies and government.

    The results are fascinating. The impacts of The Trigger are examined and explained in great detail, as the discovery is handed from the scientific to the political and military community. Everyone who comes in contact with The Trigger immediately wish it would disappear, but everyone has to face the fact that it’s here to stay, and accommodations must be made in order to ensure its rational use. Gun Lobbies inevitably get into the act, lawsuits fly, private corporations rush Triggers to the market and private citizen watch it all happen with increasing discomfort. Top-notch extrapolation all around, along with some preachiness. Certainly not subtle, but nevertheless compulsively readable.

    There are a few problems, though. The characters of the first half essentially disappear in the latter part of the book. Then the ending falls apart as one character is killed in a rather useless fashion, and another has to face enemies closer to caricature. A shame, because up to that point, The Trigger had labored hard to present “the opposing side” as basically decent people. After the intellectual complexity of the first 400 pages, it’s a let-down to see the climax being nothing but an action-adventure bit facing stock villains. A chilling afterword kind of makes up for it. (Though, given the conceptual breakthrough at mid-novel, one would expect this type of discovery -not to mention bigger, better innovations- to be made much earlier than twenty years later!)

    But it doesn’t really matter. With The Trigger, Kube-McDowell has achieved something quite remarkable: Break the “Clark Collaboration Rule” (which used to state that every novel written in collaboration with Clarke does suck.) and produce a novel that stands alone in its own right. The Trigger is, in general, everything that SF should be: It postulates a radical technological change, follows its controversial social implications and does so in an magnificently entertaining fashion. Don’t miss it.

  • Forever Free, Joe Haldeman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1999, 277 pages, C$30.99 hc, ISBN 0-441-00697-3

    WARNING: Contains necessary spoilers in discussing the book’s failures.

    Fame can do strange things to both performer and audience. An artist whose reputation comes chiefly from hard work and constant professionalism can suddenly find himself able to turn out mediocre work with impunity, as the audience uses earlier works as an excuse to be lenient on newer material. Both sides lose out, because the the artist doesn’t perfect the work, and the audience gets results of inferior quality. In the book industry, best-selling authors can become “editor-proof”, when no one will take take them to task for overwritten books, weak prose or ordinary execution.

    For instance, Haldeman’s thematically-linked Forever Peace won raves and a Hugo despite being a novel that read more like a moderately-competent first-time author’s work than a novel by a veteran of the genre.

    Similarly, It’s easy to pinpoint Forever Free‘s problems, but it gets difficult to ponder why Joe Haldeman wrote the book that way. Especially when it’s the sequel to one of the most famous SF novels ever.

    You may remember The Forever War: Published in 1974 as a Vietnam veteran’s answer to Robert A. Heinlein’s militaristic Starship Troopers (itself a classic), it went on to sell thousands of copies, win both the Hugo and the Nebula awards as well as gain a central position in the genre’s collective memory. The Forever War described the military experience of William Mandella, a physicist-cum-soldier in a war waged during millennia, thanks to light-speed delays. At the end of the first volume, Mandella found himself home with his girlfriend, ready to settle down as Humanity allied itself mentally with the once-enemy alien race.

    As Forever Free begins, Mandella is restless: His two children are grown-up and he’s trying to find a way to prove that his type of human is better than Man, the collective entity now representing most of humanity. His best plan? Hijack a starship and make a one-way trip far in the future to see how it all turns out. Stuff happens and things don’t go as planned.

    More specifically; they limp home twenty-five years later to find out that everyone has disappeared. They investigate and get weird results.

    “How weird” is exactly the problem with Forever Free. While The Forever War (and the first half of Forever Free) is strictly enjoyable hard-SF of the most rigid order (the whole premise of both depends on the absence of Faster-than-light travel), the last pages of Forever Free lazily throw up a completely useless race of shapeshifters (“We’ve been around on Earth for hundred of thousands of your years,” they say offhandedly) and an apparition by God that would be more at home in a Monty Python sketch than in here. (“Oh, you were an experiment, and it’s now time to put away my stuff. Since you insist, I won’t delete you. Oh, I’ve changed to laws of physics while I was at it. Toodles. “) The central mystery of the book isn’t as much solved as it is basically declared irrelevant.

    Needless to say, the result is so outlandish that some readers are likely to give up in disgust a novel that that been perfectly good up to that point.

    Which naturally raises the question; why was it written this way? I offer a few explanations, none of them really satisfying:

    • “Ha! I’ll write you a sequel, you bastard readers! You keep pestering me for a sequel to a twenty-five year-old classic that stands on its own? I’ll give you a frickin’ sequel.” (Also suspected to be the Thomas Harris Hannibal syndrome)
    • “Oh, no! Five days to go on my deadline, or I lose my fat advance! Gotta wrap this up quick!”
    • “It’s like, man, I’ll put my stuff about Goddd and the universe and stuff. It’ll be sooo deeep and stuff. Man, pass the joint again.”
    • “The metaphorical encounters the literal in an effort to make the reader experience the same sense of alienation as the principal characters, which nicely fits into the post-modernist ethos of nihilism-”
    • “Oh gee, I screwed up this one.”

    Pick one… but don’t pick this book in bookstores, and wait for your library copy if you really insist to see what the fuss is about.

  • Detective, Arthur Hailey

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 1997, 595 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-16386-5

    Arthur Hailey is best known for novels that peeked under the surface of familiar institutions to reveal their inner mechanics. Hotel and Airport became blockbuster movies that did much to ensure Hailey’s continuing bestsellerdom. The Moneychangers dealt with banks. Wheels talked about the Detroit auto industry. Overload took on the power-generating industry. The Evening News… well, you get the picture.

    In all cases, Hailey delivered intricately researched novels, seemingly taking more delight in showing us fascinating facts than in building a satisfying plot. You could say that Hailey practiced the technothriller years before the genre was formally defined by Tom Clancy. In almost all cases, the first half of his books -“the guided tour”- was far more interesting than the eventual plot of said novels. But as long as the guided tour was interesting, no one really minded.

    In his latest novel, Detective, Hailey takes us behind the scenes at the Miami Police Department. In doing so, he faces perhaps the greatest creative challenge of his career: If there’s a social institution that’s been explored over the years, it’s police departments. The whole sub-genre of police procedurals, for instance, is based upon describing details of police work. Seasoned veterans of this sub-genre -and, given the popularity of crime-fiction, most general readers- already know most of the essential details; what could Hailey teach us?

    The only way to avoid major problems would be for Hailey to abandon his usual reliance on “the Guided Tour” and, for once, give us a good plot sustained during the whole book.

    Fortunately, he (mostly) manages to do that. Detective plunges in the story in an admirably efficient fashion, as a Miami police detective is summoned at the side of a death-row inmate. In a few deft pages, we’re in flashback city as previous events unfold (sometime in nestled flashbacks) and bring us up to speed in short order. The rest of the novel is smooth going, as elements of the plot are developed effectively and the writing is as compulsively readable as anything else written in the sub-genre.

    I added the (mostly) qualifier because even though Detective is written with professionalism and skill, it suffers from major structural problems by the end of the book. As a crucial element of proof is uncovered, a hundred pages before the end, it essentially concludes any suspense as to the whodunit part of the plot. Everything else is redundant explanation or mechanical conclusion. The final climax seems as contrived as perfunctory.

    Hailey might, in fact, be too professional in his approach; everything wraps up so neatly that it approaches ludicrousness. A minor criminal cannot simply be a minor criminal, but somehow be related in an exotic fashion to one of the book’s character to illustrate some kind or ironic counterpoint. The identity of the murderer can be deduced from a presence at an unlikely point. The fantastically gifted protagonist isn’t “just” a top-notch detective, but also an adulterous ex-priest… convenient…

    It doesn’t matter much, though. Detective remains a good read and a good story. Worth a look, not only for Hailey fans, but also for anyone looking for some effortless entertainment.

  • Carrion Comfort, Dan Simmons

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1989, 884 pages, C$6.95 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-35920-3

    One of Carrion Comfort‘s main characters is a Hollywood movie producer of the shlocky kind. It’s not hard to imagine someone like him taking a look an an early version of this novel and berating the author: “I want more sex! I want more violence! I want more action scenes! Give me helicopters, Nazis, explosions, gay sex, conspiracies, religion, chases, nuclear submarines and destroyers! Give me more! I want more! More! More!”

    Because Dan Simmons’ Carrion Comfort has it all; it’s the epitome of the blockbuster horror novel, the type of book designed to be so over the top that you can’t but admire its audaciousness. You’ll cheer as you cringe, and laugh while you’re disgusted.

    The premise itself is endlessly rich in sadistic possibilities: Simmons postulates the existence of a group of “psychic vampires” (so to speak) that have the Ability (or Power, or Talent) to take control of other people’s minds, effectively controlling them for as long as they want. From that point, it’s ridiculously easy to imagine these Mind-vampires indulging themselves in gory violence, simply because they can. Lack of accountability has its privileges.

    Expanded from the novella of the same name, Carrion Comfort tacks on 850 pages to the original story, taking it much farther than Simmons’ initial effort. What gradually emerges isn’t an expansion of three Mind-vampires’ game of remote killing, but a power struggle between highly-placed forces of evil. The French Translation of the novel is aptly titled Evil’s Checkerboard (L’échiquier du mal, actually)

    In theory, it sounds impressive. In practice, it has numerous great moments but suffers too much from unequal pacing to be epic horror. At 880-odd pages, it’s inevitable that there are long stretches in the book, but the second quarter seems to serve no other purpose than to kill off a main character. The third is dedicated to preparations for the fourth quarter. (It doesn’t really help that by mid-book, we have a pretty good idea of where the book’s going to end, and with whom.)

    To be fair, some of the action set-pieces are so good that they elevate the book to “should-read” status anyway. There’s a spectacular helicopter explosion. A few great confrontations between the Mind-vampires and our dedicated protagonists. A momentous final chess game. A great set-piece inside a semitransparent airplane where the ultimate villain reveals himself to be far more powerful than anyone suspected.

    And to be frank, the characters are developed with a lot of skill. Despite the large cast of characters and the multiple double-crossing parties, the plot remains easy to follow and to enjoy.

    Did I say “enjoy”? Truth is, Carrion Comfort isn’t for the weak-stomached among us. It’s filled with gratuitously grisly material, pushing violence and exploitative sex to levels which might be unbearable for some. But then again, why would these people read horror?

    In any case, this big bad horror package is exactly what you should read if ever you start wondering what Hollywood could do with an unlimited budget and none of those pesky parental ratings problems. Granted, Carrion Comfort isn’t subtle, particularly original, or even better than competent in its execution (making it a great horror novel would require editing out maybe three hundred pages) but it’s a whole lot of fun.

    Nazis, Vampires, explosions, sex, violence, religion, money, power… wrapped in carefully-chosen psychobabble to give it a sheen of respectability. I tell you; this book’s got it all. Don’t feel too guilty for enjoying it; after all, mom told you to eat properly, but that never stopped you from enjoying that occasional burger, right?

  • Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 1953, 179 pages, C$5.50 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-34296-8

    The true measure of a classic is how well it withstands the test of time. Whether or not it’s firmly grounded in a contemporary setting, a classic will carry through universal themes that will resonate decades, even centuries after the work is done. You can watch CASABLANCA today and still marvel at how good the dialogues are, and how well the film is constructed. Even if some details are lost or seem antiquated, the main message still comes through. So it is with Fahrenheit 451.

    Everyone’s got their blind spots. In my case, even though I’m a card-carrying SF geek, I had never read one of the most important works of the genre, Ray Bradbury’s 1954 classic Fahrenheit 451. Nor seen the Francois Truffault film. Of course I knew the story, from multiple comments about the work, family members who vividly remembered the film and other various sources. But as for the original work itself; no I hadn’t read it.

    Fortunately, cultural deficiencies are easy to correct, and it took barely a day to breeze through Bradbury’s book. Fahrenheit 451 is, like most SF novels of that time, a short novel that doesn’t stray far from its central idea, nor burden the narrative with useless subplots. The story here stays firmly with the character of Guy Montague, a fireman in a future state where firemen are not public guardians, but instruments of state-controlled censorship; they burn books. (“Houses have always been fireproof!” states a character, as if this fantasy needed rationalizing.)

    Montague, as is the norm in novels of this type, discovers the forbidden knowledge, rebels, is discovered and tries to escape. Put this book alongside 1984, Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale and not only do you have four variations on the same plot, but you also have an unimaginative High School English course.

    But that would be belittling Fahrenheit 451‘s impact, which is even more important today than ever before. No, you’ll say, the first amendment (or local equivalent) has always withstood all attempts at censorship, but the truth is that censorship is now far more devious than ever before… and is now practiced not exclusively by the government, but by seemingly righteous groups and -most ominously- giant corporations trying their damnedest to co-opt the government in doing the dirty work.

    Don’t believe me? As of this writing (September 2000),

    • A fundamentalist conservative “liberal” vice-presidential candidate is trying to impose anti-violent standards to film and television “to protect the children” and uphold ill-defined “standards of morality”.
    • The Recording Industry Association of America is trying to shut down Napster, a file-exchange method that could become an alternate delivery channel, by blaming “piracy”, again with ill-defined arguments.
    • The Motion Picture Association of America is suing a magazine for republishing a decryption algorithm to defeat a copy-protection scheme.
    • Lobby groups from entertainment corporation (ie; Disney) have modified copyrights laws to extend them to 100 years after the death of an author, effectively preventing all works made after WWI from becoming public domain.
    • At the same time, individual American states are passing laws that essentially state that all software is now effectively rented from their manufacturer, who then acquires the rights to tell you how to use it.

    All of which corral the consumer/citizen in a world when everything is owned by someone, and that someone can dictate what you can say about it. No book-burning, no, but do you seriously think that, if the concept of libraries would be invented today, it wouldn’t be sued in oblivion?

    Thank you, Ray Bradbury, for writing something like this, with the power of making me hyperventilate nearly fifty years after. Thank you for such a great book. Thank you for the chief fireman’s speech, which encapsulate all censorship nightmares in one chapter. Thank you for that manhunt which is ever-closer to reality TV. Thank you for a book where the tune is more important than the words, but where no one would dare change any of your words. Thank you for Fahrenheit 451; if you’re remembered only for that, it’ll be a life well-spent.

  • Boy Wonder, James Robert Baker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Signet, 1988, 560 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-451-16506-3

    Long-winded reviewer

    It has become common to say that Hollywood is insane beyond imagination. But Boy Wonder one-ups every true story you’re heard so far, and that’s no mean feat.

    Jacket Blurb

    Cross CITIZEN KANE with BLUE VELVET and you’ll get some idea of this wide-screen send-up of the movie business as it follows the career of Shark Trager -rebel filmmaker and mega-successful producer- from his birth in 1950 at a drive-in movie theater and his meteoric rise to the pinnacle of Hollywood power, to his equally spectacular descent, crash, and burn.

    Snotty critic, gesticulating

    The real post-modern narrative breakthrough of this so-called comedy -for it is rather truly a savage attack on American values- is in its deconstruction of a traditional narrative flow into pseudo-interview excepts of fictional characters said to have known Shark Trager, but really; is the concept of cognizance truly meaningful, ask the author-

    Eighth-grade student, struggling with book review

    Mister Trager is not a good man at all. He does not like his father, does evil drugs and make bad movies.

    Film geek

    Both the best and most disappointing elements of Boy Wonder come from James Robert Baker’s handling of Hollywood excess through Shark Trager’s films. One of them, WHITE HEAT, takes the concept of the “killing couple” to its logical extreme, foreshadowing films such as NATURAL BORN KILLERS. The production of another, Red Surf, ends up with one of the most outrageously spectacular scene of a novel that already contains several moments of pure insane delight. It perfectly exemplifies the bigger-explosions-are-better mentality that pervades the atmosphere of certain blockbusters like, oh, ARMAGEDDON. BLUE LIGHT is the culmination of all those nonsense feel-good epics than mix half realism with half new-age pseudo-mysticism and end up attracting crowds for nothing more but simplistic philosophy and great production values. FORREST GUMP, anyone? Is it an accident if all of these movies came after Boy Wonder was written, or another depressing reminder that the real Hollywood often imitates fiction?

    Long-winded reviewer

    Beyond the simple satire, however, one could go crazy trying to plot the complex character interrelationships gradually interweaved during the narrative. Fittingly enough for a pseudo-biography, Baker has succeeded in creating a full fictional life, as unlikely as this life is.

    Teenage guy

    Hot damn! Fast cars, hot sex, hard drugs, big explosions, tons of deaths and one screwed-up hero! I didn’t read about any Nazis in there, but that’s pretty much the only thing missing. Wouldn’t it be sweet if there was one?

    Ecstatic Bible-thumper

    This reprehensible book has been sent from the flaming pits of hell itself! It has to be the raunchiest, most offensive novel in the past ten years! I will not subject you, dear readers, to the ignominy of a description of the perversions contained between these covers, but only take my word for it and avoid! Boy Wonder isn’t only disgraceful in itself, but it is an affront to society, family values and God itself.

    Long-winded critic

    Obviously, this very outrageousness is the core of one’s enjoyment of Boy Wonder. Part of the pleasure is reading the completely demented scenes of Shark Trager’s life and taking delight in how fantastically over-the-top this all is.

    Film geek

    Unfortunately, outrageousness takes its toll, and I started wondering why there wasn’t even more good stuff in the book. By the climax -which obviously takes place at the Oscars-, even public nudity, homosexual sex, heavy drug usage, constant bickering and a sudden death seem all a bit under-whelming. But that’s a minor quibble, much as at the end, I would have liked to seen even more films made by Trager. It would have been nice, also, to depart even more from the sort of alternate Hollywood created by Baker to accommodate Shark Trager.

    Teen guy

    More, more, more!

    Long-winded critic

    Ultimately, Baker has realized a tour-de-force, given as he can sustain, at the same time, his concept, his protagonist, his gallery of characters, his satire and his sweep of thirty years of history while presenting everything in a crystal-clear prose.

    Teen guy

    You know, I don’t like reading, but that book, I just couldn’t stop.

    Long-winded critic

    And so we come to the type of recommendation that every critic loves to make: A revelation. Boy Wonder isn’t a very popular book, nor is James Robert Baker a best-selling author. But Boy Wonder is worth tracking down in libraries, in used bookstores and in flea markets; it’s that good. Few novels approach its satiric edge or its extreme outrageousness. It is a memorable book and a great read. Do not miss it.

    [September 2000: Good news, very bad news: While an official site exists at http://jamesrobertbaker.com/ (along with a present-day update on Kathy Pedro), it states that Robert James Baker unfortunately committed suicide in 1997. Grab Boy Wonder while you can.]

  • The Martian Race, Gregory Benford

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner Aspect, 1999, 340 pages, C$32.00 hc, ISBN 0-446-52633-9

    The nineties have been an excellent decade as far as Mars and Science-Fiction have been concerned. SF writers returned to the Red Planet en masse, virtually re-inventing our SFictional view of the planet in light of NASA’s latest discoveries about it.

    The crowning Mars work of the decade, of course, goes to Kim Stanley Robinson’s masterful Mars trilogy, which set the tone for a series of scientifically accurate novels perhaps more concerned with writing future history than overblown SF. A refreshing chance after Burroughs’ fantasy Mars.

    Interestingly enough, even though there was a first Mars boom in the early nineties, (Bova’s Mars, Williamson’s Beachhead, Anderson’s Climbing Olympus, etc…) the Pathfinder expedition of 1997 (as well as the flap about Martian “fossils” in 1996) rekindled interest in the fourth rock from the sun. As Hollywood re-discovered Mars on its own (with MISSION TO MARS, RED PLANET, at least one TV movie and persistent rumors of a James Cameron film project), written SF went back to Mars another time: Bova’s Return to Mars, Baxter’s Voyage, Hartman’s Mars Underground, Robinson’s The Martians all went back, sometime literally, to the red planet for one more adventure.

    Now Gregory Benford packs up his rockets and also blasts off to Mars, in an adventure that suffers from a few problem but manages to provide a satisfying read.

    The setup innovates somewhat: Instead of the government directly financing a martian expedition, a series of mishaps convince the government to do business differently: They offer a prize of thirty billion dollars to whoever can get to Mars, perform some exploration and return safely. The novel opens as one expedition financed by a billionaire comes to a close. Of course, disaster strikes, a second expedition pops up, a pair of significant discoveries is made and money threatens to run out.

    The novel begins with a chronologically fractured narrative, which isn’t as successful as a straight timeline would have been. (An approach more similar to Robert J. Sawyer’s usual middle-of-novel-scene-as-prologue might have been more successful than the attempt to pass of the flashback exposition interleaved in the main story.) But as the context is straightened out and the stakes rise, the novel gets steadily more interesting.

    Of course, it helps that Benford has learned how to write clearly. His first novels (even the much-lauded Timescape) were embarrassments of pretentious prose masquerading as depth. Though he always had the capacity to do it (His mainstream thriller, Artifact, dates from 1985) it is only in the last few books (Cosm, most notably) that he’s shown a willingness to stick with an uncluttered, transparent, elegant prose.

    The Martian Race is ultimately a pretty good -though not exceptional- novel of hard-SF. Though the idea-density is low for experienced readers of the genre, they are well-developed and the novel can survive quite easily on its increasingly engrossing narrative. Before long, the title begins to acquire a double meaning that is eventually proven right. Not much suspense, but it doesn’t really matter.

    Though I doubt that Benford’s predictions will be realized -all his wishful anti-government thinking aside-, The Martian Race is another brick in the pro-Mars SF wall. It holds up well to Kim Stanley Robinson’s standard-setting trilogy and represents a good choice for almost any SF enthusiast. Now, if only Mars movies could be as good as Mars books…

  • Oceanspace, Allen Steele

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2000, 375 pages, C$30.99 hc, ISBN 0-441-00685-X

    All throughout his SF career (now spanning 11 books in little more than a decade) Allen Steele has shown a remarkable writing talent somehow not fully exploited.

    From the orbital space station of Orbital Decay to the watery depths of Oceanspace, Steele has made some progress, but it’s hard to say if he’s a better writer now than before. His books always seem to struggle at the “good read” level (eg; Clarke County, Space), never somehow going further than that (Labyrinth of Night), or when they do, they contain a crucial flaw that destroys the book (A King of Infinite Space, his best but also his most frustrating work). Fortunately, his short stories are usually more satisfying than his novels, proving once again that some people are simply more suited to shorter-length stories.

    Part of it has to do with his point of view. Steele is one of the few staunchly liberal SF writers in a genre traditionally dominated by conservative ideology. He has written stories praising drug usage (Orbital Decay), blasting eeevil governments (The Jericho Equation) and his stint as a journalist on an alternative weekly paper has left indelible marks on his fiction (again, see The Jericho Equation and, to a lesser extent, All-American Alien Boy). In The Tranquillity Alternative, one of the characters is revealed early on to be a lesbian, virtually ensuring her of a “get out of jail free” card: No way is Steele going to pin the bad-guy role on such a target.

    That’s not the biggest problem with The Tranquillity Alternative, but it’s emblematic of Steele’s lack of sophisticated plotting. Set in an alternate world where the Americans had a space program much, much earlier and then stopped after establishing a moon base, The Tranquillity Alternative is a travelogue in which a last mission to the moon base is perturbed by a terrorist plan. Most of the book is spent travelling to the moon, waiting for something to happen. Then the terrorists do something, the heroes fight back, win and go home. The end.

    The alternate space program is well thought-out (inscribing itself in the steps of Stephen Baxter, another writer who’s spent a lot of time in parallel space expeditions) but the rest of the world isn’t as well put-together. The synchronicity of events between the two universes (going as far as having identical dates to similar events) is either eerie or sign of a hasty world-building, depending on charitable you feel at this moment.

    The result is interesting, and readable as always, but given Steele’s talents, may we not expect more? That’s also pretty much the tagline to any review of Oceanspace, the latest of Steele’s novels.

    Here, Steele leaves space and goes undersea, again mimicking a minor SF trend (what with the undersea novels of Arthur C. Clarke—to whom the book is dedicated- and Peter Watts’ recent Starfish), which is fine as long as he’s got something new to bring to the genre. Unfortunately, Steele hangs a few standard plots and characters to the ocean setting for a result that’s quite entertaining, but at the same time very familiar. Nipick: The presence of CD players in 2011 is unexpectedly jarring; what about MP3?

    But give Steele some credit; here, the journalist isn’t a good person, marital harmony is praised and the traitors are punished. Oceanspace has the characteristics of a good paperback read, though it is definitely overpriced as a hardcover; the idea density simply isn’t there. There’s a sea monster, true, but don’t get too excited as it only make incidental appearances.

    Briefly put, Steele remains at the threshold between good entertainment and good SF, hovering between the two as if he’s unable to find the really good idea and build the really exciting plot to take his books to the next level. You can’t really go wrong by buying a Steele paperback (except, perhaps, for King of Infinite Space) because they’re always exact, fun and readable, but don’t bother springing for the hardcover.

  • The Writer’s Guide to Creating a Science-Fiction Universe, George Ochoa & Jeffrey Osier

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Writer’s Digest, 1993, 314 pages, C$26.99 hc, ISBN 0-89879-536-2

    The very existence of certain books can tell you more than you wished to know about the world. Go to your nearest mega-bookstore and look around at the book categories. Who could have thought that there could be so many new-age freaks, needlepoint enthusiasts or (bookshelves!) amateur gardeners?

    You may think you know all about interest groups, but really; had imagined that there could be a whole series of books for wannabee SF writers? I’m not kidding; Writer’s Digest Books has a series of books aimed specifically at the beginning science-fiction writer. Books on how to create alien societies or create typically “Science-fictive” effects. In hardcover, no less.

    The Writer’s Guide to Creating a Science-fiction Universe has a self-explanatory title. The authors aim to provide any new and struggling writers with an array of facts, thoughts and technique with which to create a believable backdrop for any serious science-fiction story.

    In truth, this is pretty much the only thing a prospective writer has to know in order to write good SF. Whereas good writing techniques can be adopted from almost any other type of fiction writing, the essence of SF is in its creation of imaginary, yet plausible worlds that can withstand the scrutiny of even the most demanding readers. The authors are careful to ground prospective writers in the SF ethos of imaginary realism and the result is a book that’s not only useful, but well-intentioned:  They not only give out specific information, but also encourage the writer to develop a true sense of what is meaningful in the genre.

    It is a measure of how useful this guide is that you can not only read it cover to cover, but also use it as a reference work. The first part of the book is more or less a snappy overview of essential scientific knowledge required to write adequate SF, and one can easily refer to selected excerpts to ensure that they haven’t screwed up. Even though the book dates from 1993, it has aged well so far, mostly due to its reliance on general overviews rather than advanced research (see Charles Sheffield’s Borderlands of Science for a book that fails on this level.)

    And even for those not really interested in writing SF, this Guide can fulfill another purpose: The writing is clear and direct, lively but detailed, so that it can serve as a general science vulgarization book, with occasional asides to recommended SF (in a scientific context) as well as an introduction to the whole idea of SF-as-fictional-study-of-change. There is, easily, a freshmen-level college course in general science to be distilled from this book.

    Interestingly enough, George’s Ochoa bibliography is a marvel of scholarly eclectism, with dozens of books on a wide range of subject, from movies to history, public library answer books to sound recordings. One gets the feeling that be brought the same vulgarization abilities and professionalism to The Writer’s Guide to Creating a Science-Fiction Universe. The result is worth it.

  • Journey into Darkness, John Douglas & Mark Olshaker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 1997, 382 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-671-00394-1

    Most law-abiding citizen are, at one degree or another, fascinated by criminal behavior. Temptation from the dark side? Vicarious living through the illegal actions of others? Reassurance that being a criminal is always a bad idea? Whatever the reason, the publishing industry has responded in kind: a whole new non-fiction category (“True Crime”) has been created to satisfy a lucrative need.

    Of all types of criminal activities, serial killing must be one of the most incomprehensible to the ordinary mind. One can rationalize theft, fraud, assault or even accidental homicide, but repeated cold-blooded murders are out of anyone’s conceptual framework. And yet, some people make it their job to get into the mind of serial killers. John Douglas is probably the best-known of them, having long been director of the FBI’s profiling unit, which specializes in establishing psychological portraits of typical serial killers. Journey into Darkness is an account of his work, his methods and various cases in which Douglas has some expertise.

    This isn’t Douglas and Olshaker’s first book together, (They also previously wrote Mindhunter) and this has some effect on the book’s ultimate impact. While Journey into Darkness remains a good read, it seems to skirt on a few important issues and suffers from a structure that doesn’t flow as naturally as it should. One get the feeling that this is more of a sequel to a previous book in which all the introductory elements have been explained. Journey into Darkness must assume that most of its readers are already familiar with the basis of profiling, serial killer definition and the high-profile cases in the specialty.

    Even then, however, the book remains worthwhile. For a newcomer to the profiling work, it’s fascinating to see how, from a few clues, specialized FBI agents can deduce or narrow down some characteristics of the killer’s environment, behavior and socioeconomic situation. Douglas explains that most serial murderers are intelligent young white males with few social contacts. They have low self-esteem, often live at home with a relative, have a history of abuse, pyromania and cruelty to animals. They know how to manipulate people and often return to crime scenes.

    Douglas establishes these base elements early on, then use them to show how real profiles can use clues from crime scenes to form a profile. No traces of struggle? The victim must have known the killer. White victims? White killer. Mutilations? History of sexual violence.

    Most of the book is composed of case studies of serial murder cases as examined by Douglas and Olshaker. The writing style is brisk and efficient, allowing for a glimpse in the mind of both criminals and policemen. Of particular interest is the analysis of the O.J. Simpson case. Douglas’ conclusion? Guilty, guilty, guilty…

    Unfortunately, as mentioned before, the book has a few structural problems. One case study is dragged on over several chapters, and however sympathetic the victim was, the book so far had dealt with individual cases in a matter of pages, not chapters. Another source of problems is inherent in the subject matter itself; however fascinating the subject matter is, and despite the good work in presenting the subject, this repetition of true human evil gets repulsive with time even though the interest level remains high.

    We should thankful for people like John Douglas, willing to explore the criminal mind to take away as many of them possible off the street. Journey into Darkness is a good exposition of the work practiced by his equivalents, and the results they get. Even though Mindhunter is probably the best introduction to the subject, don’t hesitate to pick up this one if the subjects fascinates you. And chances are it will.

    [February 2005: Indeed, Mindhunter is almost a prerequisite to Journey into Darkness. Not only does the prequel offer considerable background on John Douglas and the way the FBI profiling program was established, but it also describes how those “rules” of profiling were developped over time. Read it first if you can.]

  • Starfire, Charles Sheffield

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bantam Spectra, 1999, 401 pages, C$20.95 tpb, ISBN 0-553-37894-5

    Is it possible for a sequel to be… better… than the original?

    Depends on what you mean by sequel. It’s certainly more reasonable to assume that books planned from the onset to be a sequel to a first volume (say, as part of the series) has chances to be more ambitious than the first volume than a book cooked a few years later as a sequel to an initially stand-alone novel. Compare cinema with literature on this point, and after you’ve compared HIGHLANDER 2 with, say, SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, I’ll rest my case. (Though XENOCIDE could be compared with SUPERMAN III and set off a whole new debate.)

    I was not a big fan of Charles Sheffield’s Aftermath. Partly because it felt more like a disaster novel than science-fiction, partly because it was filled with unsympathetic characters that spent their time discussing various sexual dysfunctions, partly because, frankly, it just wasn’t very interesting. Aftermath, however, was obviously the first volume in a series; the ending, with its last-minute curveball, seemed explicitly designed to whet readers’ expectations.

    I happened, a year later, to grab Starfire off my local library’s shelves. No sense in spending money to read a sequel to a book I didn’t really like.

    Surprisingly, even though I can’t really say that Starfire is all that good, it’s certainly more interesting and more enjoyable than its prequel.

    For one thing, it certainly feels closer to science-fiction than the previous volume. At the end of Aftermath, scientists discovered that they had twenty-five years to prepare a shield to protect them from a serious particle storm headed for Earth. In Starfire, the twenty-five years are up and the final elements of the shield race to completion before the storm hits. But, ah-ha, things suddenly look much worse than previously; the particle storm arrives earlier than expected, packs more punch, and faces a shield that’s dogged by budgetary constraints and sabotage. Seems like, as usual in hard-SF, wacky religious groups just keep wanting the end of Earth.

    As if that wasn’t enough, most of the essential robots of the shield project are controlled by a maniacal dwarf (is there any other kind of dwarf, I ask?), who sends a traitorous woman (is there…?) to seduce a straight-laced engineer (is there…?) Even better; to solve a series of murders on a space station, a shadowy operative contacts a genius ex-serial murderer. (Now, you know that all serial murderers are geniuses.)

    A lot of stuff, mostly already seen elsewhere, but it keeps things moving at a decent pace. The constant sexual obsession of the first volume is considerably toned down and even though some characters approach cliché, it does seem as if they’re a rather more pleasant bunch than in the previous book.

    The details are a mixed bunch. As could be expected from a scientist/hard-SF writer like Sheffield, the science is adequate even though the “one single smart scientist figures it all out” cliché is once again taken for a walk. The political details, however, sound naive and far too convenient, a flaw shared by many similar novels. Political unlikeliness isn’t the only type of doubtful developments in Starfire, however; the whole ending (along with the dinosaur stuff) struck me as essentially preposterous.

    But, even though Starfire isn’t too good, it lends itself to a quick reading, and represents a step up from its predecessor. Unfortunately, it still represents another sub-par novel from Sheffield, who’s shown himself capable of both the best and the worst, often in successive books. Certainly, seeing him turn out two or three novels a year doesn’t do much to inspire confidence; is he spreading himself too thin?

    In any case, those readers who slogged through Aftermath deserve something to lessen the bad taste of it; Starfire might fit the bill. And if you haven’t read the first volume, well, it’s not essential for enjoying this one.

  • Destroying Angel, Richard Paul Russo

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 1992, 230 pages, C$5.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-441-14273-7

    Each revolutionary artistic current has its host of routine imitators, not necessarily incompetent poseurs, but averagely talented artists who are either fascinated by a new style without being able to faithfully render it, or otherwise tempted by easy monetary gain on the coattails of more innovative material.

    Cyberpunk crashed into science-fiction in the eighties and eventually faded out in the nineties as the world finally caught up to the fiction. William Gibson et al’s vision of tech-smart street people, decaying cities, dominating corporations and “dirty tech” was an all-too-common concern in the Internet-dominated nineties, and if only for this reason, cyberpunk faded out as a genre, though it radically re-energized SF in the process. (Indeed, some of the most successful SF works of the decade managed to incorporate cyberpunk’s native energy, manic invention and fascination with information technology as elements -not keystones- in a larger future tapestry. Interested scholars can look at the career of Bruce Sterling as a perfect illustration of this metamorphosis.)

    In this context, Richard Paul Russo’s Destroying Angel stands as an example of a strictly average cyberpunk novel coming almost at the genre’s death march. It is not bad -or inferior- per se, but it doesn’t really exhibit any superior qualities.

    Certainly, the plot is immediately familiar. In a downtrodden and rodent-ridden San Francisco, an ex-cop with a bad past manages to earn a living as a smuggler. But a serial murderer once thought dead reappears in the City and starts killing again, bringing back the ex-cop straight back to where he had quit the police force.

    In a few words, it’s your standard serial killer plot, along with the flawed hero, noir atmosphere times ten stirred in with the usual cyberpunk gadgets. Any more ordinary and you’d get a book put together with excerpts of previously published stories.

    But I’m being too harsh, because once you’re into the story, Destroying Angel is enjoyable in a strictly-entertainment fashion. The writing is pretty good, Russo creates an acceptable hard-boiled atmosphere, scenes move with a certain efficiency, and it’s hard not to sympathize with the tortured protagonist. Several nice touches, such as the opera-signing ghetto lady, enliven an otherwise routine narrative.

    Only a somewhat useless subplot about a young girl named Sookie drags down the book from its straight-ahead narrative. (Sookie eventually becomes vital to the plot, but the rest of her story smacks of padding in order to obtain a novel-length manuscript.)

    As with any genre, Science-Fiction’s got its blockbusters, its work of art, its true stinkers and total failures. Then there’s the overwhelming majority of the total SF production; wholly average novels that are neither really good or really bad. That’s where Destroying Angel goes; in the vast masses of the averages. To its credit, it doesn’t try to be anything more pretentious than it is; the writing is clean and obviously tries to be entertaining. It’s an acceptable thriller.

    It’s worth a look if ever you come across it at a used book sale and if you don’t have anything more pressing to read. Otherwise, it’s one of those books you can safely skip without missing anything essential to the evolution of the genre. Hopefully, the book brought money to Russo and allowed him to buy a few nice things.

    And sometimes, artistic innovation be damned, that’s all you can ask for: entertainment for the reader and money for the author.